Mike Wolanin | The Republic Signs advising patients what to do if they have symptoms connected to COVID-19 are displayed on the door to the Columbus Regional Health Treatment and Support Center in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
A drug treatment center operated by Columbus Regional Health is seeing an increase in new patients seeking help with substance abuse disorders, largely driven by what officials described as a “fentanyl crisis” and a very worrisome rise in alcohol abuse.
The rise in demand for treatment comes as the decades-long addiction and overdose crisis that has gripped Bartholomew County turns even deadlier, with synthetic opioids including fentanyl “killing people in our community in numbers that are greater than we’ve ever seen before,” officials said.
So far this year, CRH’s Treatment and Support Center, or TASC, 2630 22nd St., has seen 228 patients who had never sought treatment there before, putting the facility on pace for about 406 new patients this year and narrowly surpassing last year’s mark of 404 new patients, according to figures provided by TASC.
TASC, which opened its doors in July 2019, provides a range of outpatient treatments for substance use disorders, including medication-assisted treatment in certain cases.
“I’m anticipating that we’ll see more patients than we have in the past,” said TASC Medical Director Dr. Kevin Terrell. “…I think part of it is that there are more people who are using substances.”
Local officials have expressed concern that a continued influx of the fentanyl in the community will continue to accelerate the county’s historic rise in overdose deaths, saying that the synthetic opioid has “essentially replaced heroin” in Bartholomew County.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is more potent than heroin but cheaper to produce and is being increasingly cut into other drugs — including heroin and methamphetamine, among other substances — often without the buyers’ knowledge, leading to accidental overdoses and “killing unsuspecting Americans at an unprecedented rate,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Drug traffickers have started churning out fentanyl-laced pills under the guise of prescription medications, including Percocet, Adderall, Xanax, oxycodone, among others.
The end results of the influx in fentanyl have been tragic in Bartholomew County, where the drug has quickly become the “primary fatal drug in drug overdoses,” officials said. At one point this year, fentanyl was involved in 12 of 15 overdose deaths in the county.
Terrell has already seen two cases in which TASC patients said they had bought pills off the street without knowing that they contained fentanyl.
“The biggest concern I have is that people are using fentanyl in our community, and they don’t know it,” Terrell said. “…I haven’t seen a urine drug screen that has been positive for heroin in several months. When patients come in here saying that they’ve been using heroin, it’s always fentanyl.”
Terrell also expressed concern about an increase in the number of people seeking treatment of alcohol use disorder, including many patients who had no prior history of alcohol abuse.
While most TASC patients are struggling with opioid or methamphetamine use, alcohol “is becoming a not-too-distant” third-most common substance people are seeking help with, he said.
“Many of the people that I’ve seen have never misused alcohol,” Terrell said. “And we’re seeing not only people who are newly using alcohol, but people who had a former history of misusing alcohol, they began to turn to alcohol use again. I have to think that it’s related to people being isolated during the 2020 year, when the world was essentially shut down.”
New efforts
TASC has started some new efforts over the past year, including offering walk-in hours, which Terrell described as a “huge success.”
From Feb. 2 to this past Monday, 255 patients came to medical walk-in hours at TASC, including 146 who were new to TASC, Terrell said. Also, 141 new or returning patients have gone to walk-in therapy hours.
“The walk-in hours have been a huge success so far — much more successful than I anticipated,” Terrell said. “I expected to be busy for a few weeks and for walk-in visits to taper off to a slow trickle. Fortunately, I was mistaken.”
Besides the walk-in hours, TASC also has started treating patients for hepatitis C, a virus that can be transmitted through IV drug use, and is now offering a longer-lasting injectable version of buprenorphine, the main ingredient in Suboxone, a medication that can treat opioid addiction.
The injectable form of buprenorphine, called Sublocade, can be taken once every 28 days to one month, instead of daily doses of Suboxone, Terrell said. Currently, a “few dozen” TASC patients are on Sublocade.
But as TASC enters its fourth year of operations, Terrell said he is worried about what the next wave of the drug crisis will be.
“The biggest concern is always, ‘What’s next?’” Terrell said. “…We’ve got fentanyl in our community. It has essentially replaced heroin. Heroin, 10 years ago, replaced pills. And so the worry is what’s the next powerful substance that’s going to be created that is going to plague our community — and then will we be ready for that new epidemic of drug use that we’re going to be facing?”
